September 17, 2006	Sunday	Sha'aban 23, 1427

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ISLAMABAD, Sept 16: Jurists and lawyers here on Saturday urged the government to revamp the legal education system and set up countrywide centres of excellence to produce advocates and legal and judicial professionals of high calibre.

The demand was made by speakers at a policy dialogue on “strengthening the legal education system: issues, initiatives and strategies” organised under the Access to Justice Programme (AJP) of the ministry of law, justice and human rights.

Chairing the inaugural session, Justice Amanullah Khan, the chief justice of Balochistan High Court, said legal education was the bedrock on which the whole edifice of judicial excellence stood.

But, he added, unfortunately the decline in both professional standards and the quality of legal education had adversely affected the quality of judicial service delivery.

All the eight major reports of the Law Commission since 1958 have strongly recommended strengthening the quality and standard of faculty, curriculum and facilities in the law schools, he noted, adding that virtually none of those recommendations was ever implemented. There was no institution in the country which promoted dialogue about the role and responsibilities of the legal profession or to set, monitor and enforce the standards in legal education, Justice Khan said.

He said the legal education sector was facing many challenges including shortage of faculty, infrastructure, resources, lack of research and modern teaching methodologies, obsolete curricula, on-campus unhealthy activities and lack of multi-disciplinary approach to legal education.

He said the AJP was destined to reform the legal, judicial, police and administrative justice sector institutions and had kept the legal education system a priority area. He said the government had committed itself to initiating a dialogue with the existing public and private institutions and to establish the centre of excellence in legal education.

Justice (retired) Nasira Javed said students should be imparted litigation, writing and drafting skills besides incentives to work hard. She regretted that the legal education committee constituted by the national judicial policy-making committee had yet to produce any practical recommendation for the improvements of legal education system in the country.